I've always been amused by those overwrought conspiracy theories which
paint the CIA as the spider at the centre of a web of intrigue,
subversion, skullduggery, and ungentlemanly conduct stretching from
infringements of the rights of U.S. citizens at home to covert intrusion
into internal affairs in capitals around the globe. What this outlook,
however entertaining, seemed to overlook in my opinion is that the CIA is
a government agency, and millennia of experience demonstrate that
long-established instruments of government (the CIA having begun operations
in 1947) rapidly converge upon the intimidating, machine-like, and
ruthless efficiency of the Post Office or the Department of Motor
Vehicles. How probable was it that a massive bureaucracy, especially
one which operated with little Congressional oversight and able to
bury its blunders by classifying documents for decades, was actually
able to implement its cloak and dagger agenda, as opposed to the usual
choke and stagger one expects from other government agencies of
similar staffing and budget? Defenders of the CIA and those who feared its
menacing, malign competence would argue that while we find out about
the CIA's blunders when operations are blown, stings end up getting
stung, and moles and double agents are discovered, we never know about
the successes, because they remain secret forever, lest the CIA's
sources and methods be disclosed.

This book sets the record straight. The Pulitzer
prize-winning author has covered U.S. intelligence for twenty years,
most recently for the New York Times. Drawing on a wealth
of material declassified since the end of the Cold War, most from the
latter half of the 1990s and afterward, and extensive interviews with
every living Director of Central Intelligence and numerous other
agency figures, this is the first comprehensive history of the
CIA based on the near-complete historical record. It is not a pretty
picture.

Chartered to collect and integrate information, both from its own
sources and those of other intelligence agencies, thence to present
senior decision-makers with the data they need to formulate policy,
from inception the CIA neglected its primary mission in favour of
ill-conceived and mostly disastrous paramilitary and psychological
warfare operations deemed “covert”, but which all too
often became painfully overt when they blew up in the faces of
those who ordered them. The OSS heritage of many of the founders
of the CIA combined with the proclivity of U.S. presidents to order
covert operations which stretched the CIA's charter to its limits
and occasionally beyond combined to create a litany of blunders
and catastrophe which would be funny were it not so tragic for
those involved, and did it not in many cases cast long shadows upon
the present-day world.

While the clandestine service was tripping over its cloaks
and impaling itself upon its daggers, the primary
intelligence gathering mission was neglected and bungled to
such an extent that the agency provided no warning whatsoever
of Stalin's atomic bomb, the Korean War, the Chinese entry into that
conflict, the Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the building of the
Berlin Wall, the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the Iranian revolution, the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran/Iraq War, the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait, the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, and more.
The spider at the centre of the web appears to have been wearing
a blindfold and earplugs. (Oh, they did predict both the outbreak
and outcome of the Six Day War—well, that's one!)

Not only have the recently-declassified documents shone a light
onto the operations of the CIA, they provide a new perspective on
the information from which decision-makers were proceeding in many
of the pivotal events of the latter half of the twentieth century
including Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and the past
and present conflicts in Iraq. This book completely obsoletes
everything written about the CIA before 1995; the source material
which has become available since then provides the first clear
look into what was previously shrouded in secrecy. There are 154
pages of end notes in smaller type—almost a book in itself—which
expand, often at great length, upon topics in the main text; don't pass
them up. Given the nature of the notes, I found it more convenient to
read them as an appendix rather than as annotations.